Wave Boarding

This past weekend, I observed what we are learning in Physics while watching my brother wave board outside our house. In this picture, he is pushing off the ground to begin his motion, giving him a positive velocity and acceleration. Velocity measures his speed and direction. Since his speed is increasing and he is moving forward, his motion would be represented by a straight line with a positive slope on a velocity graph. However, if he were for instance, trying to go up a hill but was unable to and began to slide backwards, his velocity and even his acceleration could be negative because of his change in direction. If my brother started from our house and went down the street, turned around and came straight back to our house using the same route, his total displacement would be 0. This is because he would have travelled about 25 meters forward and negative 25 meters backwards. Since velocity is calculated by dividing the total displacement by the elapsed time, in this case, his average velocity would be 0.